Electoral Reform Society: Pledge on Tory Women welcomed: Cameron urged to follow logic of own conclusions and embrace reform

The Electoral Reform Society has welcomed David Cameron’s recognition that we need more women in our national parliament.

The Society, a part of the 2008: Women and the Vote campaign, is currently engaged in research to see just how many women are likely to reach the House of Commons at the next general election.

The Society’s Chief Executive Ken Richie said:

“It is laudable to see a party leader recognising a most obvious deficiency in their own party. All major parties at some time must face up to the lack of women in their own ranks and do something to overcome the problem. And it takes courage to admit that the 17 women and 180 men on the Conservative benches reflect neither the nation nor the party’s supporters at large.

“But almost 90 years after the first woman sat on the green benches, and a Conservative woman at that, we need more than just quotas.

“At the weekend David Cameron told his party that we needed "a new politics that will start to repair the political breakdown in our country." Today he tells the Guardian that he believed we had a “broken political system.

“Isn’t it time that Mr Cameron recognised the logic of his own conclusions and turned on our winner takes all political system that has penalised both women and his own party for so long? International experience shows that, with systems of proportional representation, not just are more women elected but parliaments reflect the diversity of society in all sorts of other ways.”

“If the Conservatives really are the party of personal choice shouldn’t they recognize that it is high time to bring genuine competition back into government? Westminster, like local government needs multi-member seat proportional representation to allow the Conservatives to run a balanced ticket and ensure that both more women and minorities were elected to Parliament.”


Notes to editors

The 2008:Women and the Vote campaign website is available here:
www.womenandthevote.com

PR systems have on average 10% more women representatives than FPTP. More details of biases against the Conservatives in Westminster elections are chronicled in the Society’s The Conservatives and the Electoral System: http://www.electoral-reform.org.uk/oldsite20070123/publications/briefings/The%20Conservatives%20and%20the%20electoral%20system.pdf

Conservative Viscountess Nancy Astor, was the first women elected to actually sit in the Commons in 1919. The Sinn Féin and Fianna Fáil politician Countess Markiewicz, while the first women elected, never took her seat.

Contacts

Contact the Society’s press office on 020 79281622
The Society’s Chief Executive Ken Ritchie is available on 07754 165551